Thursday, August 10, 2017

Putin Used Wars to Boost His Popularity Doesn’t Have a Good Option Now, Oreshkin Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August 9 – Three times in
the past, Vladimir Putin has used war to boost his popularity – in Chechnya in
1999, in Georgia in 2008, and in Ukraine since 2014 – but he doesn’t have any
good options to repeat this a fourth time, even by expanding his aggression in
Ukraine let alone in Belarus or Kazakhstan, according to Dmitry Oreshkin.

“In Ukraine,” the Moscow analyst
says, “pro-Russian force resources are exhausted. Belarus and Kazakhstan are
our allies, and a small victorious war with them would look extremely strange.
The same thing is true about the Syrian war which in Russia society has
generated more anger than satisfaction” (business-gazeta.ru/article/353809).

That means, he
continues, that Putin will conduct his re-election campaign on an “inertia,”
trying to avoid losing his current level of support but not coming up with
anything that could really boost it. The only real possibility for that would
be to organize a coup against him as Erdogan did in Turkey and then present
himself as the savior of Russia once again.

Putin has little or no chance to
reinvent himself: he has been in power too long and his style and image are
fixed in Russian minds. Russia needs a new image of the future, and Putin is
not too old to come up with one, but he is trapped by his entourage which doesn’t
want change and is clearly tired. Moreover, few would believe any new model he
might propose.

Putin must be “an eagle or appear to
be an eagle,” to update Pushkin’s line, Oreshkin says, “because if Putin ceases
to be an eagle, then he will become a Brezhnev.”

Putin could of course refuse to run,
but those around him don’t want that because they consider all the possible
alternatives as dangerous risks of change that would work against them. And
Putin who trusts no one would have to trust his replacement not to move against
them or him personally. That is very unlikely, and Oreshkin says he is
confident Putin will run.

To go quietly as Yeltsin did would
be “a catastrophe” for someone like Putin.

He might leave in 2024 but he isn’t
thinking that far ahead. For him and the oligarchs, “it is important to
preserve power for the next six years.”Beyond that, neither he nor they can now think.

There is one wild card, however.
Putin could “uncover some internal conspiracy,” use it to frighten people and
generate support for himself in that way much as Turkish President Recep
Erdogan did.To do so, however, would require “organizing an internal
enemy” as least as threatening as the Chechen separatists.”

And
while this is unlikely, Oreshkin concludes, “it is not excluded that something
like this will be done in the